Little by Little, by Julie Chavez (Chapter Summaries)

Chapter One: Sleeping with the Lights On

I experience my first panic attack while lying in bed on a spring night. This is related to a systemic anaphylactic reaction that occurred in November, five months prior to this night. I’m terrified that I might die of anaphylaxis, unable to breathe. I am thirty-eight years old with two sons, and my husband and I recently went to Europe without our kids on the most romantic, wonderful trip of our lives. My anxiety has been steadily increasing over the last months, but the rise has been so slow as to be nearly imperceptible, hidden underneath endless to-do lists and an unrealistic number of commitments. I call the advice nurse on the morning after my panic attack to receive her reassurance that I won’t die from everyday exposure to allergens.

Chapter Two: This Won’t Have to Be Complicated

Though I don’t refer to it as a panic attack, the experience seems to flip a switch in my body, and I’m now feeling constant waves of anxiety. I know I need help. The last time I remember needing this sort of help was in 2007, just after the birth of my first son. My OB at the time was a leveling presence and knew me well enough to recommend supports to alleviate my postpartum. Because this is the most recent memory of need, I make an appointment with my current gynecologist, Dr. Cooke. I plan to request a therapist referral and blood work to ensure my hormones or thyroid haven’t gone awry. This won’t have to be complicated, I think. I just need to turn off this switch.

Chapter Three: This is Not What I Expected

I’m wrong: this will be complicated. My visit with Dr. Cooke is quick and confusing. She delivers a hasty diagnosis after less than fifteen minutes when she tells me that the reason for my constant level of buzzing anxiety is straightforward: I’m doing too much. She tells me I need to quit my job, and that I should do so today. She orders no blood work but sends me away with a prescription for Xanax and a permission slip to quit my job, as if I’m a child who’s late to school and not a thirty-eight-year-old mother of two. I feel surprised by my sudden slide, just as my postpartum experience was not what I expected.

When Dr. Cooke suggests my job is the source of the problem, she creates an opening for doubt. I have only recently returned to working and I now spend thirty hours a week in the library of my boys’ elementary school but I’ve made very few adjustments to balance out those extra hours.

I spend an afternoon sobbing in the principal’s office. She doesn’t want me to quit, nor does she believe it’s the right decision, but she represents the first person who will hold space for me as I wade through this crisis.

Chapter Four: You Don’t Seem Like Yourself

I begin to doubt myself, and I believe that I’m unable to articulate my increasing need. I feel alone and adrift: I followed my intuition when I made the appointment with Dr. Cooke, and my intuition has seemingly failed me. I begin polling those closest to me to help me navigate the new question of whether or not I should quit my job. Because Mando has never experienced anxiety and isn’t a particular comfort to me during this time, I turn to my sister Amy. She takes my anxious calls as self-doubt begins to take hold, and she reassures me there’s a solution.

I spend a few days regaining my nerve to search for therapists on my own. I experienced depression in high school; I began to see a therapist after my volleyball coach told me I didn’t seem like myself. I saw a therapist and took Zoloft for a short time. I know that therapy worked for me then and I’m continuing to nurture the hope it will work now. Out of the four therapists I call on Thursday, two return my calls, and only one has space for an appointment. I’ll see Kim next week.

Chapter Five: Sandpaper Love

I see Kim on a Wednesday afternoon. While I wait in the small waiting room, I think back to my high school days of therapy. Though I wish I had written more down, I remember this: I had locks, my therapist had keys, and I’m hoping this one will, too.

When Kim opens the door, I see she’s well dressed and has the kind of hair that looks as if it always behaves according to plan. I cry through our first session, sharing my fears of death. I emphasize that something in my body has been turned on and now I desperately want to turn it off. Through my tears, I tell her I feel slightly unhinged, as if I’m having a midlife crisis. Her response is that I’m a bit young for a midlife crisis, but maybe I’m having a mid-mom crisis, unsure what to do now that my boys’ independence has increased.

When I return home, Mando asks if I like her, but he’s really asking if it’s going to work; it feels like pressure. We’re fixers and we want to fix this.

Chapter Six: Triggers

The day after my first appointment with Kim, I have an appointment for a massage. I believe it will help, but it doesn’t. It’s terrible. My physical symptoms have worsened. I’m exhausted and wired all the time. On Friday, Mando and I go to an escape room with friends but I stay close to him, experiencing a pop of anxiety when we move into the small space.

I wake up on Mother’s Day in the fetal position, and I cry in the tub with the mimosa that Mando has prepared for me. I do everything I can to keep it together for the boys and be gracious, even when my need is so intense. I’m disappointed to find emptiness where I used to find rest. I need more than the cheap Instagram-worthy self-care; I’m far past needing a pedicure and a latte.

On Monday morning I’m feeling dangerously close to another panic attack. I wake early and the minutes crawl by until I can call the office of our Physician Assistant at 8:00 to make an appointment.

Chapter Seven: Take the Pill

I sit in the waiting room of our family practice. The anxiety has exacted a physical toll: I’ve lost weight. I worry that this slide may not have a bottom.

In the exam room I meet Tim, a PA who has cared for us well over the last few years. I explain what’s happening and he listens well before he tells me, gently, “Julie, I think you might be depressed.” His diagnosis feels like a relief. He prescribes Zoloft and gives me Klonopin for the acute symptoms.

I call Mando on the way home and his response echoes my relief. When I call Amy from the car to express a concern that I could be allergic to this medication (which is irrational, since I took the same one in high school), her response is quick and decisive: “Take the pill.” I’m napping when Amy calls Mando later in the afternoon to release some of his own fear and concern. He says to my sister, “I’ve never seen her like this.”

Chapter Eight: Patching

At my second visit with Kim, I tell her that I felt much worse after seeing her. I tell her about my appointment with Tim and the resulting decision to start on the Zoloft. She tells me she thinks this is a good decision, and I’m gratified by her approval. We talk about my constant fear that I’m failing to make the right decisions, and we also discuss my tendency to predict future events, consistently populating the outlook with imagined disasters and potential grief.

My son Eli wears glasses, and when he was young, I learned that the weaker eye sometimes has to be forced to work in order to strengthen its connections to the brain. Patching is the process of covering the stronger eye to achieve this goal. When I walk down the street and buy a puzzle after my appointment, I’m patching. I’ve become a productivity machine but I’ve starved out my connections to myself. I go home and sort the pieces, feeling like shit and trying to reconnect to joy.

Chapter Nine: Fragile Doesn’t Mean Broken

When I wake up on Wednesday morning, I see a friend’s post on Instagram. Casey is the widow of one of Mando’s co-workers who died last year. His death was unexpected, sudden, and he left behind two daughters who are close in age to our boys. Casey’s posts are triggering for me, but I keep opening them up, keep delving into the knowledge that sometimes the worst happens.

I share this information with Kim. I tell her I hate being so fragile, and she nods before she responds and says, “Remember, fragile doesn’t mean broken.”

Later that week, my mom calls to tell me that my dad has an upcoming CT scan. She and my dad have lived in Japan for the last four years and though the distance is always challenging, today it feels untenable. My mom also asks after Mando’s sister, Briana. Her alcoholism came to light last year; she was recently hospitalized for complications relating to a liver infection.

I’ll have to recover while I’m in motion, it seems. 

Chapter Ten: Headaches and Migraines

On Memorial Day weekend we go to a country club with friends for a “family day.” The dads plan to play golf while the moms spend time at the pool with the kids. I’m bottoming out: I’m depleted and depressed and sit next to an obnoxious acquaintance. When Mando and the other dads return and immediately decide to play cornhole, I’m furious at the complete lack of “family” in this “family day,” the way the moms are expected to shoulder the burden of the childcare.

It wasn’t until I experienced my first migraine that I understood it to be completely different than a severe headache. In a similar way, Mando harbors the same sort of simplified thinking about my current depressed state. When I start texting him from across the pool to tell him I need to leave, he’s angry. He doesn’t understand the grip of depression, though he will have his own experience with it later this summer.

I’m at a low, but I’m beginning to feel rage as I see the complicity of the people around me who were happy to have me endlessly do, do, do for them. Our argument when we get home marks a turn: I’m done apologizing for my need. 

Chapter Eleven: High Hopes

In my session with Kim on Wednesday, I describe our meltdown at the country club. I tell her about a specific part of our argument. When we returned home, Mando pointed out that nothing had slipped around the house, and I was beside myself. If I was able to add thirty hours of work to my week and there had been no change in his life, then something was clearly out of balance. I desperately want him to “get it,” and I feel raw and sensitive.

I’ve always pushed for optimal outcomes. I want assurances that I’m making the right decision, even when such an assurance doesn’t exist. I even felt this way before Mando and I were engaged. I had to learn that our marriage wouldn’t be a choice made one day; it would be a choice made every day. But I didn’t consider this sort of behavior to be worry, though Kim points out that’s because I had a limited vision of what constituted a worrier.

I close up the library for the summer and for the first time since our trip to Europe, I find myself enjoying a new song: “High Hopes,” by Panic at the Disco. I turn it up.

Chapter Twelve: Good in a Crisis

At a swim team event on Tuesday, I sit with friends and one of them mentions Kate Spade’s suicide. The news is instantly triggering for me: though I’m not suicidal, I fear it. I treat it like a hovering specter of possibility.

In my junior year of high school, I had a close friend—also named Kate—who committed suicide, and I tell Kim this story today. I feel slightly unmoored and I compensate by rigorously monitoring myself. I explain to Kim that life feels precarious, knowing that our minds can betray us so awfully. I tell her I still grieve my friend.

When I return home, I receive a call from my mom that my dad’s CT scan revealed a blockage in three of four of the vessels surrounding his heart. The vessel that is 99 percent blocked is known to medical professionals by its nickname: the widowmaker. He will have surgery in just a few days in Japan, and I’ve never hated the distance between us more.

Chapter Thirteen: I’ll Be Here When You Get Back

I share my fears of suicide with Kim the next day. It’s Wednesday, June 7, Briana’s thirty-fifth birthday—and it’s now clear she will die in the hospital. Briana’s mom died in a car accident when she was thirteen and since then her life has been a swirl of depression and trauma and addiction. These choices, especially over the past two years, have amounted to a sort of slow suicide, which adds additional layers of grief.

Mando receives a call on Sunday morning that it’s time to go to Nashville to say goodbye to his sister. He leaves early Monday morning. My dad’s surgery happened late Sunday night due to the time difference, and after Mando leaves I learn that although it was successful, a lack of sedation and the language barrier made it extremely stressful for both my parents. He’ll have another surgery in two days.

On Tuesday, I take the boys to Water World, and I’m standing in the parking lot when Mando calls to tell me Briana’s gone. I focus all my energy on finding tiny pockets of space for myself as I try to absorb all the emotion of this week. My dad’s second surgery is traumatic: it lasts for six hours and he experiences a heart attack during the procedure. By the time I collect Mando from the airport the next day, my parents have arranged for him to have his next surgeries in California. 

Chapter Fourteen: One Step Forward

I decide to start a new book as part of my return to hobbies that bring me joy. However, I trot out old, self-sabotaging behaviors when I choose a psychological thriller to prove my strength to myself. I call my sister in a cold sweat after reading about an agoraphobic woman in The Woman in the Window. I’m highly suggestible but at least I’m starting to understand my patterns. The process is two steps forward, one step back.

Briana’s service won’t happen until late July, and the wait is leaving Mando suspended in a purgatory of grief. He’s sliding into his own depression but his is expressed differently, manifested in a variety of mild physical ailments. I’m sensitive to his moods, absorbing a piece of his sadness. I focus on my self-care as we limp through the coming weeks.

I’m slowly becoming reacquainted with my feelings, learning to accept that the ups and downs are natural, that emotions will come and go like waves. I decide to go to yoga, and when I cry during savasana, it’s an outpouring of gratitude that I was able to find stillness without anxiety. One step forward.

Chapter Fifteen: Everything Changes

On Tuesday, I spend the day making the program for Briana’s service. The next day, I tell Kim that the emotion of that task resulted in a sad, anxious day. Kim reminds me that it’s okay to have bad days; a bad day doesn’t mean I’m backsliding, which is a prevalent fear.

Kim is helping me adopt a more hopeful version of the future in order to free me from these fears. I shoot for perfection, but the result is I’m gripping my life so tightly I’m strangling it of joy. Kim reminds me that everything changes: acceptance is the only path that will serve me. And as I remember a time when my mom tried (and failed) to teach me to sew, I think of the lesson of my mom’s most precious person, her Aunt Annie: it doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful.  

Chapter Sixteen: You Can Do This

Mando, the boys, and I travel to Colorado for Briana’s service. Mando speaks beautifully at the service, and the boys cry when they see their dad crying. We spread Briana’s ashes near those of her mom under a bluebird Colorado sky, and as we do so we pray she’s finally at peace. It’s a gutting weekend, but it’s finished, and Mando’s depression slowly begins to lift.

The four of us arrive at the airport depleted and exhausted and we bicker our way through the terminal, desperate to get home. I will start work in the library next week and I’m nervous, but I feel stronger. I’m seeing signs of progress, a slow letting go of some of the thinking and behaviors that sunk me in the spring. Kim has helped me learn to hear my own voice again, and it feels like I’m remembering how to ride a bike again.

Chapter Seventeen: Be Adequate

I adopt a new motto when I return to work on the last day of July: Be Adequate. I walk through my days carefully but with a little more freedom, more lightness of heart. When we go to the dentist later that week and he tells me my home care is “adequate,” I’m thrilled. I take the boys for ice cream to celebrate.

I’m beginning to feel a more consistent rhythm in life and it shows in my sessions with Kim. I get to the point more quickly, and today I talk to her about a stressful experience with a tetanus booster. I know injections are still triggering for me, tending to draw up memories of the systemic immunotherapy reaction. I asked Mando to accompany me for that reason, but he didn’t make the time and so we argued about it later. But when I speak to Kim today, I tell her that for the first time Mando has context for what depression and anxiety feel like. At the conclusion of our argument, there was empathy I hadn’t seen before.

Mando travels the next week for work and both boys have Back-to-School Nights on the same night at different schools. I skip both events, a celebration of my adequacy. But more than that, it’s the first time I’m using my actions to support my new belief: I’m enough for my family because of who I am, not only because of what I do.

Chapter Eighteen: It’s Going to be Good

I take the day off work and drive down to Stanford for my dad’s surgery. He and my mom are both emotional and nervous, so I compensate by making them laugh as we wait for the nurse to come collect him for pre-op. I’m here, being adequate, being enough. His surgery goes well but they discover he’ll need one more procedure before he returns to Japan. After surgery, I feed him oatmeal as he emerges from the anesthesia and I’m grateful to be a daughter today.

Driving home, I realize that today felt settled because I wasn’t divided. I had made it possible to be present, asking for help and support with the boys. As I make my way back north, I wonder if it’s possible to stop being all things to all people and instead simply be enough by just being myself. 

Chapter Nineteen: Adaptation

The boys and I have our annual visits with Tim. I decide to take the assist by choosing to stay on the Zoloft, comforted by the safety net it represents. Nolan asks Tim about teenage suicide, and the most important part of Tim’s response comes when he says, “If you’re stuck and there’s nothing you can find to help you feel better, that’s when it’s time to open your mouth and start talking.”

On the way home, I emphasize to the boys that Tim is a trusted person and that his advice was spot on. I tell them it’s exactly what I did this spring.

We enjoy dinner with my parents at our house before they leave to return to Japan, and I marvel at the ways my dad’s body compensated for those blocked vessels. It’s a reminder of how we often settle for compensation when adaptation is what will serve us, what will help us to stay healthy amidst the endless changes of life. 

Chapter Twenty: Live the Questions

Kim and I have an appointment in early October, just before Mando’s annual guys’ trip. It’s an annual event and I’ve always been quietly—or sometimes not-so-quietly—resentful of his ability to demand his own self-care. But this year, I want him to find rest and joy with his friends. I’m no longer jealous of his freedom because I’m slowly learning to claim my own. And as I learn to be easier on myself, I’m also learning to be easier on others, to release the pervasive scarcity mentality that makes me sour and bitter.

I turn thirty-nine in mid-November, and my birthday is joyful. I’ve spent a lot of time tending to my own garden this summer and I’m seeing the fruit and appreciating the flowers blossoming, opening up to the sun. This labor has taken time and attention but it has been worthwhile, fruitful.

Everything changes. But today my boys and husband sing “Happy Birthday,” and it’s far more than enough.

Chapter Twenty-One: Tiny Acts

I have a visit with Kim in March and it feels like it’s time for us to stop meeting regularly. She has helped me to hear my own voice again, and I’ve found my confidence. I prioritize my self-care now, demanding the space I need. At the end of our session, I ask Kim if I can text her for an appointment when I need one. She says that’s perfect.

In April, I have my annual review with the principal of the school and it serves as a marker of time. It was one year ago that I sat in her office sobbing. Now my life and our family life have more balance. We’ve adapted, and it’s a gift.

In June, after the conclusion of school, I lie on the couch and read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. The children bicker and I let Mando deal with it, content to read my book instead of popping up to attend to everyone’s needs. It’s a tiny, revolutionary act, but it represents the truth of the past year: the tiny acts tanked me, but I now know they have the power to save me.   

Epilogue: Little by Little

The lessons of this year of my life are more than applicable in 2020, which is proving to be a dumpster fire. My children are doing school from home and one morning Eli’s friend sees me crying in my pajamas after I watch a Back-to-School Night presentation online. The enormity of loss in 2020 is often more than I feel I can bear.

But I move through life little by little, step by step. I pay attention to my feelings instead of busying myself with an endless to-do list. I cry when I feel sad or overwhelmed. I text Kim depressed-looking bitmojis with my appointment requests. I gaze out at an orange post-apocalyptic sky filled with smoke from fires and tell myself, Everything changes, so just hold on. It’s a terrible year, but I move through it slowly, which allows me to find the tiny blossoms of hope, of joy, of love. Little by little, I’m covering the distance of my life, and I’m finding it’s enough, and I’m finding I’m enough.